


and then the earth spun

by thelittlefanpire



Series: My TROPED Fics [9]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, F/M, Mardi Gras, Trapped, Voodoo, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-11
Updated: 2020-02-11
Packaged: 2021-02-28 07:08:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22659841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelittlefanpire/pseuds/thelittlefanpire
Summary: After the world went dark, Octavia Blake was tired of just surviving. She wanted to truly live, so she made her way to a place where she could do exactly that.
Relationships: Octavia Blake/Lincoln
Series: My TROPED Fics [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1337341
Comments: 10
Kudos: 25
Collections: Chopped: Choose Your Own Adventure





	and then the earth spun

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Chopped: Choose Your Own Adventure Challenge! I did a lot of research to make this fic feel authentic but I also wanted it to be unique to the story I had in my mind, so here’s a big mix of all that—Chopped-style! 
> 
> My choice of theme: Holiday 
> 
> My choice of tropes:  
> 1\. Post-Apocalyptic AU  
> 2\. Magic AU  
> 3\. Zombie AU  
> 4\. Trapped in or hiding in an enclosed space (that I used in an unexpected way...I hope!)

Octavia Blake was ten years old when the world went dark. One moment she was sitting on the couch, watching her older brother, Bellamy, play video games while she did her homework, and then everything went pitch-black in the blink of an eye. 

She could still remember how she jumped at Bellamy’s light touch after they had sat there in silence as the day drew to a close. It was evening, and the sun was going down, so little light showed through the window to light up the Blakes’ apartment. Suddenly, she couldn’t see his hand resting on her forearm that she slowly brought up to her face. There was a stillness in the air, it felt like the whole world was holding its breath as the darkness swallowed it. 

Eventually, the earth spun. Bellamy stood up in search of candles, the neighbors above them opened their squeaky windows to let in the fresh air, and the foot traffic outside picked up as people left their cars behind to return home. 

Octavia didn’t move or take a breath until a candle flickered in her peripherals. At ten years old, she was still terrified of the dark. Bellamy sat back down on the couch with cold pizza for them to eat and they waited right there for their mom to return home, hoping she could explain the eerie power outage. 

She didn’t return until the next afternoon and she only brought them more questions. She told them she had walked all the way home since the buses were out. Her factory job was on the other side of Arkadia. The streets were filled with abandoned cars and no one in the city had power. She sent Bellamy out to scrounge up any news he could find. Day after day, he came back empty-handed. 

Days turned into weeks, but Octavia and Bellamy didn’t return to school, and their mom didn’t go back to work. Nothing in the city was open. They soon ran out of food and had to barter with their neighbors, exchanging clothes and supplies for food and water. And then they left Arkadia. 

They went west, to the mountains, where Octavia’s mom, Aurora, had grown up, and where they weren’t drowning in the filth of the city. It was fun at first, like camping, something Octavia had never done before. They learned to catch fish in the river, and the trailer park that they lived in held big bonfires every night. 

But the winter was harsh that first year. They almost froze to death. Aurora did her best to keep them warm by making the men in the trailer park comfortable, too. 

Octavia was fifteen when she ran away from home. She left in the middle of the night after her mom had gone out and Bellamy had rolled away from her in the dark. They had been whispering to each other more frequently when they thought Octavia wasn’t looking, Bellamy came home with cuts on his face and bruises on his knuckles that he didn’t care to hide from her anymore. Bellamy was afraid someone would hurt Octavia, Octavia was afraid Bellamy would hurt someone, and then someone would kill Bellamy. So she left. She hiked south along the coast using her camping and fishing knowledge to survive on her own. 

It took years, but eventually, Octavia would find out that solar flares had taken out the modern technologies of the world. There was absolutely no electricity—no phones, radios, cars, nor air travel on the entire planet. The American Government dissolved before the military could offer any kind of aid or organization. Wildfires devoured the West Coast during the first summer after the blackout and spread east until winter stopped them. Then the winters wiped out much of the population with sickness and starvation. Crowded cities crumbled and people revealed the best, and the worst, of themselves, as they fixed their broken worlds. 

At twenty-one, Octavia got tired of just surviving, wanting to finally live, and made her way to a place she could do exactly that. On her travels south, she had caught word of a place that was rebuilding itself on the Gulf Coast. She said goodbye to her current companions, a band of delinquents she met by the ocean and headed west. 

The city was surrounded by water with a skyline that took Octavia’s breath away as she climbed across the bridge to the city center. She stepped down from the concrete steps and was immediately met by a streetcar blocking her from going any farther. A man waved her on and it took off toward the city, at a speed, she wasn’t used to, the thick hot air blew her hair all around her. There were a few other passengers on board that seemed unfazed by their ride. She held on tight to the handle grips and frantically looked all around for the source of the speed. 

Outside the streetcar, she noticed people peeking out of their shotgun houses, long rectangular residences with rooms arranged one behind the other, along the streets as she passed. Early colonials were standing tall under oak trees and Spanish moss. As the streetcar drew closer to the city center, Octavia could make out burnt skyscrapers falling down and colorful buildings with missing windows, but the old bones of the city were still standing strong. 

She jumped off near a place called, the French Quarter, where the hub of the city appeared to be. She had half a hope that they had restored the electricity with the way everything was clearly flourishing. 

The ground floor of the buildings that lined the square was filled with shops and eateries. Octavia could smell the familiar scent of coffee and sweets mixed with unfamiliar fragrances of trees and cooking flavors. On the second floor, wrought-iron balconies were overflowing with foliage. Full gardens were being grown right out on the porches. Lanterns swung from the ceilings with candle wax dripping down from them. But it was the unusual absence of stench, that accompanied a community this big, that puzzled Octavia the most.

There were people everywhere. Sitting out in front of cafés, picking vegetables from their gardens, frying meat on open fires, talking amongst themselves, and laughing. She had never seen people so carefree, in the last eleven years, not since before the world went dark. 

Overwhelmed, she waited for the world to spin, and then she ducked into the first café that caught her eye. It was painted bright purple and trimmed in gold. A cold, once-neon sign framed the door, reading, Mama Indra’s, Octavia pushed it inside and got to work at doing everything in her power possible so that she could stay in this magical city. 

“Look alive, Limyè Krewe, look alive! This float isn’t going to carry the court all by itself!” A dark man weighed down in multi-colored beads yelled from the top of the float Octavia was working on. A long piece of dry grass was hanging from the corner of this mouth. She sighed and wiped her brow. The heat was already sweltering and the sun had only just risen above the horizon. Octavia continued to thread the gray-green moss of the oak trees onto the sides of the trailer that would be pulled by horses later that night. 

She had been doing all kinds of odd jobs the last few days in the city, from waiting tables in the café to running errands from one end of the city to the other via the fast-moving streetcars to decorating floats for some kind of parade. 

Someone called her name, so she looked up and out across the square, to her great relief, and found Lincoln standing outside Mama Indra’s. He was the son of the woman who owned the place and the one Octavia reported to. He held a large plastic crate in his broad, bronze arms. She left the float and made her way across the buzzing courtyard quickly. There was more going on in that square than Octavia had seen since she arrived two weeks ago. 

“Help me hang these on the balcony?” Lincoln asked her as she approached. He wore a warm smile under his beard and she noticed he had on a nice, pink shirt when he handed her the crate. She was used to his stoic expressions and flour-covered overalls that he usually wore, but he looked nice today. Octavia tipped forward when she felt the full weight of the crate and it landed heavily on the ground. 

“Um, yeah I got it. Where am I taking this?” Octavia blew out a breath and juggled the crate up until she had a better handle on it. When she looked down, she saw that it was filled to the brim with beads like the float man was wearing. 

“Up the stairs through the back of the café,” Lincoln said but didn’t offer to give her any more guidance or help. He had turned his back to her focusing on the tables in front of the store and opening their umbrellas. 

Octavia gripped the sides of her load and did her best to carry it up to the balcony. She didn’t want to appear weak in case Lincoln decided she wasn’t useful to him anymore. 

When she first stepped inside the café, she thought she had been transported back in time. It was a hole-in-the-wall type place. Tables and chairs were packed in as tight as they could be, a bar ran along one wall and a full jazz band was perched on a tiny dance floor on the other side. The walls were filled with posters and paintings, horns and beads, yet candlesticks hung from chandeliers that had replaced the light bulbs. It could have been today or fifteen years ago, the café appeared to be lost in a time capsule. 

Octavia passed the empty chairs and dance floor now to the stairs tucked away by the bathrooms up to the apartments above. She could smell the strong aroma of coffee and sweet powdered sugar from breakfast as she made her way up the steep steps. She had been crashing on the sofa in the hallway at the landing and kicked her backpack farther underneath it as she walked by. 

Out on the balcony, she sat the heavy crate down and waited for more instructions. Her elbows came to rest on the wrought-iron and she watched the hustle and bustle below her. The city was having a celebration that evening and it was pulling out all the stops. Music, colors, and food were spilling out of every crevice in the Quarter. 

“What does limyè mean?” Octavia asked when she heard Lincoln opening the glass doors that went out the balcony where she was resting. His heavy boots slid across the patio towards her. She glanced back to see he had another crate filled with face masks. 

“Lights. It’s their krewe name. The moss hanging off has clumps of sweetgrass in it from the bayou,” Lincoln pointed down at the float. “Fireflies nests in them and uh, well, you’ll see it later tonight.” 

“It’s so magical,” Octavia said in awe, staring out at the decorations along the other balconies and the bright blue sky up above. Lincoln nodded and pulled out a mask leaning down to hang it from the balcony so it hung at head-height from the ground below. And then he silently instructed Octavia to do the same with the beads. 

“That’s Mardi Gras,” he said simply after a moment. 

Lincoln did that a lot. He had been teaching her about the culture in NOLA, formerly New Orleans in the state of Louisiana, but she only ever heard it called by the abbreviation. She would ask a question and he would answer it like it was the most obvious thing in the world. He taught her about the cuisine, languages, and history of the city. 

“How do the streetcars work? Do they go all over the city?” 

“Solar-powered.” There were four of them that moved about the city, according to a map and a café patron that she talked to earlier in the week when she had to go Uptown to fetch some spices. One line was lost to water, sunken in the southern part of the city, and some lines only ran when it was low tide. But they were fast, almost as fast as when they had run by electricity. 

“What’s Mardi Gras?” 

“Fat Tuesday. The day before Lent.” She had asked why they celebrated the holiday, but he just stared at her blankly. She tried to ask the float man earlier, but he looked like he was going to murder her. That was at the crack of dawn that morning, so she decided not to think too much about it. 

They finished their task in silence, then went back inside and down to the kitchen. It was the music and food that garnered the most explanation and excitement from Lincoln. 

“Okay, so tonight we’re going to keep the alcohol flowing but we’ve also got a full menu,” Lincoln explained stepping behind the bar and sliding a menu her way. The wall behind him was lined with liquor bottles. Some were empty but most were filled with the potato vodka that was brought in from the bayou. 

“Appetizers: Shrimp & Grits, Gator Bites, and a house salad with BBQ bleu cheese dressing…,” she began to read through the menu out loud. The kitchen had an array of dried alligator heads tacked up on the walls, fresh shrimp bobbing in buckets, and fresh greens from the gardens. 

“It has spiced roasted pecans on it that is to die for. You’ll have to try them,” Lincoln said, pouring himself a shot and sliding one toward her. Lincoln acted as a bartender during the day, a chef in the morning, and a host at night. He was a jack-of-all-trades and training Octavia to be the same. 

“Um, okay. Main Dish: Gumbo, Red Beans and Rice, Jambalaya, Crawfish Etouffee...all served with jalapeno cornbread?”

“We converted the kitchen to run on natural heat. It’s all wood stoves and open fires back there, you’ve seen it!” Lincoln exclaimed when Octavia looked up at him. She had tasted some of those foods before, the recipes seemed to complex for a place with no modern kitchen appliances. 

“Where does all this food come from?” she asked instead. 

“The Bayou mostly. The Cajuns out there live on farms and they catch all kinds of critters we’ll trade them for.”

“Desserts: Beignets, and Buttermilk Pie with blackberry sauce,” Octavia finished her mouth-watering at the sound of it all. She swallowed and slipped in another question, “If they have their own food, what do you have to offer them?” 

“Magic,” a voice spoke from the kitchen. It was Mama Indra, herself, stepping out from behind the curtain that separated the rooms. She had a shawl wrapped around her small build, a short buzz haircut, and a crescent tattoo engraved around her eye, a shade barely darker than her skin. Her face was stern and showed no sign of amusement that she was joking with her. 

“M-m-magic?” Octavia tripped over her words, caught off guard by the café owner’s appearance. Lincoln embraced the older woman and placed a quick kiss on top of her head. Octavia had met her a few times over the last two weeks but the woman was a mystery to her. Octavia caught glimpses of her, here and there, but she was always too busy cooking up gators and frying catfish, to bother with the latest server that came into her restaurant.

“Protection spells for their land, potions to help their crops grow, chants for rain. They simple people so it don’t take much,” Indra said, accent thick, and winked at her slipping out from under her son who towered over her. She swiped up Octavia’s shot and went back into the kitchen. Octavia thought she was more of a religious woman than pagan. She was always going to pray in the evenings at the chapel down the street and hosting meetings with the older ladies in the community upstairs. 

The band came in noisily at that moment. A string of bangs and honks as they set up their instruments and distracted Octavia from the thought of real magic holding the community together. 

It was the people that fascinated Octavia the most. 

“All you need is a trumpet, an upright piano, a violin, a boy with a beat and a girl with some soul.” Lincoln had told her that the first night she watched the jazz band perform. The candles had been lit and cast a hazy glow over the café. The room was packed with sweating bodies, stuffed from a full meal when a young woman stepped onto the dance floor. Octavia had wondered aloud what she was doing. 

“Putting on a show,” Lincoln responded. 

The band was certainly ready to put on a show tonight. They were all dressed to the nines and already tipsy off the spirits in their cups they had brought in from the street. It was late afternoon now. Time was slipping away and Octavia could feel the buzz of anticipation for the night to begin. 

Octavia got lost in her tasks of setting up the café for the night, cleaning the always sticky tables and ‘passing the floor’ as Lincoln called it as she swept. She skirted around the other servers and bartender when they came in. The band started its first set and people began to come in. She had to take a minute to admire their attire. NOLA was a colorful city on a good day, but tonight her people were radiant. They were covered from head to toe in masks and beads and feathers. 

Lincoln caught her with her mouth hanging open and tried not to laugh when he asked her to help with one last thing on the roof. “Come on, Mama needs some more rainwater from the top,” he said smiling at her. 

“Tell me about the court?” Octavia huffed out as she climbed the stairs behind Lincoln. They rounded the flight past the apartments and then up to the rooftop. She couldn’t stop thinking about all the things tonight would hold. 

“I thought you lived out in the wild! Are you going soft already?” he said with amusement looking back at her slightly red face. His muscles flexed under his shirt, but he didn’t look a bit over-winded, and barely had any sweat on his forehead from the sweltering heat. 

“I said I lived on my own. There weren’t a lot of mountains to climb.” 

“These are just stairs, Octavia.” 

Though he was joking with her, she didn’t expect him to answer her question and then he spoke again, “Mardi Gras is the last big feast before Lent and then people fast for forty days. The city used to celebrate a lot longer than one day. They had parades and floats...and a court. A King, the queen, their maids, and dukes. The maskers...or party throwers, the socialites, you know.” 

“Wow, sounds like a lot of tradition to keep up with at the end of the world,” Octavia concluded. She still didn’t completely understand it all. They had made it up to the top of the stairs and Lincoln was unlocking a screen door wrought with iron. He paused before she could hear the lock click and he turned back to look at her. 

“The world didn’t end. It’s still spinning. We’re still here.” 

His words caught her off guard and the staircase suddenly felt too small. She tried to take in a breath but her lungs were frozen. And then she fell to the floor, her world goes dark. 

When Octavia came to, she was lying against a warm concrete bench that connected to a short brick wall. She could see all of NOLA sitting in front of the fading orange sun. The Mississippi River rolled lazily to her left and the large lake sat to her right. She stretched her arms toward the sky and felt her back pop, looking around, she spotted Lincoln by the wrought iron door. 

“Hey, what happened?” 

“Don’t sit up too quickly. You passed out,” Lincoln said, taking two quick strides to her side. He helped her sit up, gently taking her hand in his. 

“I don’t think I’ve had much to eat today,” she confessed. Lincoln pursed his lips and appeared to be thinking over the options. Once he was sure she was okay, he moved to the other side of the rooftop. Octavia took in the enclosed space and saw the rain barrels where they collected their water, small solar panels lined up on one side, and a small garden. 

“Here eat this,” Lincoln said and handed her a small stalk of lilac. She eyed it curiously. “It’s one of my mother’s enriched grains. It helps fill your stomach.”

“Enchanted?” Octavia whispered in confusion but took it from Lincoln when he offered it again. She brought the stalk up to her nose and inhaled the sweet fragrance. She poked her tongue out and felt a purple grain fall onto it. It seemed to expand as she swallowed it and settled heavily in the pit of her stomach. 

“The city’s full of magic, isn't it?” Octavia asked him, feeling much better, and stood up to where Lincoln was overlooking the French Quarter. The parade was getting ready to start. They could hear the music from the bands and the shouts from the crowd growing. 

“After Hurricane Katrina, people came in to help restore the city. They brought in the solar panels and refortified the levees around the waterways. Put it in a new sewage system. Made bike lanes. But it was the people who rebuilt New Orleans. After the blackout, it was mass hysteria, half the city was underwater, tourists fled, but we carried on.”

Octavia thought of Arkadia, and how quickly it had fallen when she was a kid. Most cities she stopped in were riddled with crime and barely holding on to any resemblance of their past. But here, it was different. 

Lincoln grew silent and they watched as the sun went down. The tangerine light reflected off the water making it look purple, like a bruise or a stain circling the crescent city. Octavia held her breath as the sun inched closer to the horizon. She was still afraid of the darkness that was moments away from engulfing the earth’s surface. 

“My daddy made the meanest drinks on all of Bourbon Street, but Mama is the best cook in the South. They’ve owned that café since I was a baby. My little sister and I grew up here,” Lincoln’s soft voice floated beside Octavia’s ear. It calmed her as he told her about his life. “I was fifteen when the solar flares wiped everything out. My sister was nine. My parents never closed the café. Not when the flood waters rose, or when the Quarter was raided, and not even when there was nothing for them to serve.”

“The vodouists took over the city and kept it afloat. I don’t practice it, but I respect it. They cleared out the bodies and started the gardens. The rest of the city followed and celebrated them,” Lincoln paused and Octavia slowly opened her eyes. 

Down below, the parade was weaving down the streets of NOLA. A trail of light lighting up their path. 

“The fireflies,” Octavia said in awe. Between the bugs and the bonfires the city was glowing with light. It reflected off the colorful walls and beads strung up making a path that moved like a snake in the grass. “We saw fireflies in the mountains.” 

She spoke little of her life before she came to NOLA now. Most outsiders didn’t share and people like Lincoln knew not to ask, but she couldn’t help but think of her life then, with her family. She missed them so much. 

Suddenly a deafening boom sounded in the distance. It shook the rooftop, then an explosion of lights lit up the night sky in the distance. Octavia and Lincoln stumbled back from the edge holding onto each other. 

“The Superdome!” Lincoln cried and swore under his breath. He was scanning the skyline. “It’s where we put the sick and then the dead bodies after the first bad storm. It’s why the city smells better than most, I imagine.”

“What’s happening?” 

“I don’t know. Could have been a gas leak or something that finally eroded away in there. Someone messing around in places they shouldn’t be.” Lincoln groaned and slammed his hands down on the brick wall. 

He looked at Octavia with a slight panic written on his features. “I forgot to mention we’re trapped up here. The key fell out of the lock. I forgot about it when you passed out.” 

Octavia looked back at the darkened door. The light from the stadium slowly dimmed and left a cloud of smoke in its wake. There was no way off the rooftop leaving them exposed to the open air. Octavia looked down at her tank top and jeans. “We should cover ourselves in case the air is bad.” 

“Good idea,” Lincoln agreed, pulling off his shirt, and then his undershirt. He ripped the cotton t-shirt in half and handed it to her. It was damp with sweat and she tried her best to avoid staring at his chiseled chest until he covered it back up with pink satin. She slowly brought the tee up to her face and secured it over her nose and mouth. She inhaled sharply at the smell of him, musk and the oil of the sweet olive he used to fry beignets with. 

“Why didn’t they bury the bodies?” Octavia’s muffled mouth asked after a beat. Lincoln had swung his legs over the side of the wall and was trying to get the attention of someone from down below. Octavia climbed up there with him. 

“We don’t bury our dead here. It’s a strong possibility they’ll pop back up with the next hard rain. Have you seen the cemeteries?” 

“I’ve passed a few. They’re massive,” Octavia conceded thinking about her rides on the streetcar. There weren’t headstones in the grass but concrete tombs that rose up like a maze that stretched out for many blocks. 

“The Superdome was like one large mausoleum.” 

Octavia shuddered at the thought of so much death. Lincoln glossed over much of the gory details but he told her more of the early dark days of NOLA. They went back to burying their dead in the cemeteries but the stadium sat untouched with the dead. 

They moved around the rooftop, shouting down to the crowd below, but not many heard them and the ones that did were too drunk to do much more than shout back at them. Once their voices were hoarse and they had shaken the iron door until their muscles were sore, Octavia slid down against the side of the wall and leaned her head up looking at the night sky. She felt Lincoln sit down beside her. 

“The night sky is so clear here,” Octavia said looking up. The Milky Way split the sky right down the middle like it was opening up to another dimension. Constellations, her brother taught her, but she had long since forgotten the names of caught her eye. Like the fireflies guiding the parade, the stars in the sky lit up the earth. 

“The Creoles here say the spirits wanted to remind us of our place in the Universe so they turned off all the lights leaving us the stars.” 

“What’s the c—?”

“Creoles like my mother. Her family came from Haiti and they believe in voodoo. My sister took up the religion, too. They’re both priestesses in the city.” 

“They helped after the blackout?” 

“You could say that.” 

Octavia had never heard of voodoo before arriving in NOLA, but she had seen an altar in one of the bedrooms on the second floor apartments. There were strange charms laid out and incense burning in tiny bowls. It gave Octavia an uneasy feeling so she usually passed the room quickly. 

“Hey, laissez les bon temps rouler, man!” A shout from below reached up to the rooftop and Octavia stood up quickly, catching sight of a drunken parade goer slapping another man on the back. They appeared to be celebrating together, but something was terribly wrong with the second man. 

He wasn’t drunk, but his face was green, and his clothes weren’t colorful, but soiled with filth. He stumbled and crashed into another man.

“What in the…” Octavia’s voice was cut off by the screams of the crowd below. The streets were already packed with people but hundreds of slow-moving, dirt covered bodies were moving silently among them. Their gait was uniformed and unnatural. It frightened the Mardi Gras crowd and some of them began shoving the dirty ones away. 

“Lincoln, stand up. Something’s not right.” Octavia didn’t know all about this city’s culture, but she didn’t think this was part of any celebration. Lincoln rose quickly, looked down and out toward the Superdome. Octavia followed his line of sight and was horrified.

Even in the dark, she could make out a clear line of people making their way from the stadium to the French Quarter. 

“Reapers,” Lincoln breathed out, his shoulders rising and falling in quick succession. Octavia reached out and placed her hand between his shoulder blades. He turned around to face her. “All those people are in danger! We’ve gotta get down there!”

Lincoln ran back to the iron-wrought door and began to shout for help. His voice bellowed down the stairs. Octavia was frozen staring down at the scene below in shock. 

“What are they? What’s happening?” 

“When the world went dark, it wasn’t as easy here as I made it seem. All kinds of people were fighting for power. Locals and out-of-towners. NOLA has always been an important port city. Some wanted to use all the water surrounding us to recreate a kind of watermill to produce energy. Some wanted to keep us in the dark. By using a darker kind of solution.” 

Lincoln’s fade was solemn and his voice broke when he continued, “My fath—my father died in a brawl that burned down Tremé. It was a spot full of Creole and those that practiced. Mama and I were in the café that night. But my sister…” 

Octavia walked slowly away from the balcony to comfort him but he held up a hand and continued, “My sister was part of the group who wanted to take over the city. They turned my father and the others who died into monsters.” 

“Didn’t you say she was nine when the world went dark?”

“Yeah, and she was thirteen when she fell down a dark path. Harnessed a power that was bigger than she was able to handle.” 

“How did you stop them?” Octavia’s head volleyed between Lincoln and the Quarter. 

“The voodoo queen banished them to the...to the dome. There weren’t just dead bodies in that mausoleum, but my angry, power-hungry sibling. And now the hatch has been blown wide open.” 

“Soc au' lait! Yat?” Indra’s face appeared coming up the stairs. She looked worried finding Lincoln clutching the iron bars desperately with tears in his eyes. 

“Mama, it’s the Reapers! A whole bunch of them. They’re in the Quarter!” 

“They’re eating people!” Octavia cried out and ran over to Lincoln. She yanked the shirt off her face, unable to breathe properly. She tried to convey what she had seen but the words weren’t processing fast enough to come out of her mouth. Images of blood spurting, and then limbs and teeth flashed before her eyes. 

Indra fumbled with a set of keys and unlocked the door. “Hurry up! Go straight to my room, Lincoln!” 

Octavia followed him down the stairs, finally being free of the rooftop, her body was pumping with adrenaline. Part of her wanted to hide. Part of her wanted to run. But she followed Lincoln to the room with the altar. Octavia faltered at the door frame, but then Indra was pushing her inside. 

“You’re sure it’s Reapers?” Indra asked Lincoln. He nodded, breathing heavily, and she picked up a bowl of dark red liquid from the floor. 

“What’s a Reaper?” Octavia heard herself whisper. The word, mixed with the sight she had seen, terrified her more than the darkness ever did. She felt her heart rate speed up and her ears filled with a rushing sound as her blood pounded. 

“The undead...controlled by voodoo.” Octavia was looking at Lincoln but it was Indra who answered her. She had kneeled down on the floor, arranging her bowls and candles in a pattern, and pulled a knife from her boot that was sheathed around her calf. 

“Like a-a-a zom...zombi—,” Octavia stuttered over her words, but no one denied or corrected her. Indra had begun to chant in a language Octavia had never heard of. She called on the spirits to protect them. A whip of wind wound through the room blowing out the candles and Indra sliced her palm letting her blood drop to the floor onto a trio of pendants. 

The world spun. 

“We’re going to die,” Lincoln’s voice trembled. Octavia could feel the vibrations and didn’t realize she was standing so close to him, their hands entwined. 

“Hush, child. This city has survived everything before tonight. It will survive this.” She scolded her son, it was almost comical to watch if Octavia wasn’t in such a state of shock and then she felt cool metal being thrust into her free hand. 

“The gris-gris should protect you from death, but stay out of the line of fire. Let’s go.” 

Octavia stared up at Lincoln in horror and he showed her that the pendant went around her neck, by hanging it over his chest, protecting his heart. Octavia did the same. They hurried after Indra as she descended the stairs. 

The café was empty when they got to the ground floor. 

“The lwa will protect us, but they’ll also feed on your belief. So yes, Octavia, the city is filled with magic and I need you to truly believe that if we’re going to survive what’s coming next,” Indra spoke quietly in the empty room, peering out the big glass windows. She seemed taller and more menacing in the reflection. The chandelier candles were all blown out above them, keeping them hidden in the shadows. 

Lincoln picked up a baseball bat from behind the door, Octavia felt herself grabbing the bow of the violin that had been left behind, and Indra was spinning something around and around in her hand. 

They crept out into the quarter. The noise instantly overwhelmed Octavia. There were growls and groans all around them. Bodies were piled up on top of one another, colors and dirt intermixed. A rancid smell hit Octavia straight in the face. She pulled her cotton tee back up over her face as she coughed. She stared in horror at the rotting flesh of the dead now revived as they crawled along the French Quarter. 

Indra and Lincoln strode straight into the heart of the Quarter on a mission. It took Octavia much longer to push her way through the crowd and once she reached the heart, Indra and Lincoln were facing off against a woman with long white dreads and olive skin. Her face was cloaked with a mask and the Reapers flanked her side. More were gathering around in a circle, boxing them in. 

“You don’t have to do this, Gaia!” Indra commanded. Some of the Reapers turned their heads at her, their eyes dropping out of their sockets, but staring right at her. 

“Oh, Mother. Do you think you can run this city forever? You’re old. I’ve got new ideas. It’s what the city wants. Look at them,” she gestured out to her followers. The undead looked hungry. 

“You can’t control them forever. Remember what happened to your father!” 

“Our father was weak! I was weak!” She spat. “But all those years baking in your prison…I killed all the other priestesses. Took their power. It is the will of the lwa.”

“You have the wrong spirit whispering in your ear, child,” Indra said and took a step to the right. Lincoln came up beside her and Octavia felt herself stepping closer too. 

Gaia screamed and a large zombie headed straight for them. Lincoln leaped in front of Indra. Octavia saw him fall to the ground wrestling the Reaper. But she couldn’t do anything but scream in horror. It was massive and ferocious, but Lincoln snapped its jaws quickly. He fell, protected by the amulet from death, but not possession. Gaia laughed maniacally. Lincoln had gotten too close. 

She swung her arm in a wide circle, energy crackled at her fingertips, and shot out toward Lincoln. He rose up slowly from the ground, the whites of his eyes growing glassy over his pupils. Blood dripped down his neck where the Reaper had bitten him. The energy from Gaia changed him into a Reaper. 

It left Indra with no choice but to choose between her children. Save one and kill the other. Gaia waited for her to choose wrongly, but the world was still spinning. 

Octavia thought of the city she felt safe in for the first time in a long time. She thought of Lincoln, who was more important to her than anyone in the world now. And she thought of the magic she was just beginning to discover, even inside herself. The spirits surrounded her, and even in the dead of night, she saw nothing, but light. 

At the last second, before Indra could raise her arm, Octavia swung the bow in her hands across Gaia’s neck slicing through her delicate skin. She closed her eyes feeling the bow of the violin sink into her like she was nothing more than decaying flesh. The young woman crumbled as her carotid was severed and she howled in pain before drowning in her own blood. It only took a moment. 

And then all the Reapers fell to the ground instantly at her death. Without a master, the undead could finally rest. Lincoln blinked and his eyes cleared. Octavia threw herself at him and wrapped her arms tightly around his neck. 

Indra leaned down and closed her daughter's eyes, before addressing the frightened Mardi Gras crowd. Octavia could see clearly that she was the one who controlled this city when she spoke, “We have suffered a great loss, but like always in NOLA, we will start again.” 

The dazed crowd murmured in agreement and parted for her to pass. 

Indra picked a branch of palm leaves as she passed the patio back to the café and pulled out a lighter from her pocket. The palm leaves began to burn, the green leaves crackling as they died. She kept the hot ashes in her palm until they were cooled and crossed her forehead. She looked back at Lincoln and Octavia with fondness, wrinkled her nose, and then stepped over a rotting body. 

“I think I’ll give up meat for the next forty days.”

**Author's Note:**

> Rough Translations:  
> “Laissez les bon temps rouler”- Let the good times roll! 
> 
> “Soc au' lait! Yat?” - “Wow! Hello, how are you doing?”
> 
> This was also heavily inspired by a Cajun restaurant I worked at a few times in college. Which I can tell you all about when the contest is over and authors are revealed! Don’t forget to read all the other fics and vote for your favs!


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